Low Fat Diets Still Trump the Low Carb Kind

Photodisc/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — Lose the fat or lose the carbs? That’s the question facing Americans who are trying to lose weight.

Lately, low carbohydrate diets have been all the rage but not as much as you might think, given all the publicity they’ve received.

A Gallup poll of 1,000 adults across the U.S. shows that when it comes to shedding pounds, 73 percent say it’s fats they try to avoid while 44 percent are making it a point to reduce their intake of carbs.

As for the general public, again it’s fats that are getting shunned by more Americans. Gallup says that 56 percent go out of their way to cut fat from the daily diet compared to 29 percent who are eating less carbs. And then there are those people who go the extra mile by scaling back on both fats and carbs.

Meanwhile, Americans are doing a little research on their own to determine whether fat is really the main cause of their weight problems. As it happens, the percentage of Americans who try to eat less fat has fallen about eight percent over the past few years.